Well, it seems I have pretty much completed my internship with Martha Stewart's photography department and I now have a job at a Representative agency.  However; I have to write a paper for the end of my internship class (Class. Hah.) It seems the semester (semester? what is a semester?) is getting pretty close to ending so I decided to start brainstorming for that paper now.  And I'm going to share with you, the lovely readers, some of the things that I have learned in little segments to help keep me creative and hopefully responsible. Things I Learned from my Internship, Part One (or Photocopy with a Smile on Your Face)

Make sure that you, as an intern, are up for anything; from constant photocopying to hanging out on a photo shoot in the studio to frantically and painstakingly putting the May book together for Martha because the Art Department intern may or may not have cut her finger with an exacto knife.  Do whatever your department asks you to, while still being aware of your time commitments (i.e. do not tell everyone in the office you will have each of their tasks done by the end of the day if it will clearly take one and a half days).  This makes you practically indispensable/ everyone's best friend.  People (a.k.a. coworkers)  will want to give you jobs that are fun because you worked so hard on the shitty ones (pardon mon francais).

They will also WANT to recommend you for outside jobs because you have shown how capable you are and they are reasonably certain they will not regret that recommendation.  This is important if you are at that internship to learn and find a job, which I believe is the sole purpose of internships (that and free labor).  Keeping that in mind, it would behoove interns to prove themselves competent and efficient.  No one in their right mind is going to recommend someone who came in and wasted the whole day doing one simple task and playing Words with Friends at their desk.

Doing all of this is all well and good, but you also have to have a great attitude about it.  You may think no one cares as long as you get it done, but people want to know that though you may not exactly enjoy photocopying invoices over and over, you will give those copied invoices back to them with a smile on your face.